MAIN ECONOMIC INDICATORS DATABASE NOTES

MARCH 2003

AVAILABLE ON DISK FROM 07-03-2003
(STA05)DBNotes/Mar

SEASONAL ADJUSTMENTS

New seasonal adjustments by OECD are generally carried out once a year, when the December figure is available.
Revisions to individual series due to new seasonal adjustments by national source or by OECD are not signalled in this note.

LEADING INDICATORS

The lists of turning points used in the calculation of the CLIs have been
updated in December 2002, with the exception of Italy, Spain (turning points for
these two countries were updated in 2001), Mexico, Greece, Luxembourg and
Switzerland. As a result, the level of the CLI data has been modified. At the
same time, some component series have been dropped or replaced, to improve the
overall timeliness of the CLIs. In addition, a CLI for Turkey has been included.
More information can be found at
http://www.oecd.org/std/cli.

A list of the new components series and a list of the suppressed components
series can be found in the attached csv file (NEWSERIES_SUPPSERIES_CLI.CSV).

DATA AVAILABILITY FOR NON-MEMBER COUNTRIES

From January 2003, only data for the six major Non-Member
countries (Brazil, China P.R., India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa) will
be included and published in the MEI publication and related electronic version.
However, all other Non-Member countries now included in MEI will from January
2003 only be available (free) on the OECD web-site (www.oecd.org) in a document
entitled "Main Economic Indicators: Non-Member Countries". This document can be
located by selecting directorates, statistics and statistics for Non-Member
countries.

EURO TREATMENT

From February 2002, the national currencies of the 12 Euro
Member countries are expressed in euro. All historical data (i.e. pre 2001 for
Greece and pre 1999 for all other euro area countries) are calculated by
applying the fixed irrevocable exchange rates. However, pre European Monetary
Union euro are notional units and are not always suitable to form area
aggregates. For further details see the article by Schreyer and Suyker in the
February 2002 edition, Statistics Brief Number 2, published by the Statistics
Directorate of OECD.

Note that, for all Euro area countries, data for periods after accession (i.e.
1999 onwards, 2001 onwards for Greece) are expressed in true euro.